conscience. As Christians we all have an obscure presentiment, if not a clear and distinct perception of it; and do seize it, if not by sight, at least by faith. We also assert, as Christians, man's progressiveness, for we never fail to repeat that it is his duty to labor incessantly to realize the end for which God made him. We may be permitted, then, in what follows, to assume that there is an end to be realized in and through the life of humanity; that it is man's duty to aspire always to this end; and that his progress, whether regarded as the race, or as an individual, consists in going to it. The practical question, and the question we propose now to consider is, what is going to this end for which man was made, and by what means or agencies do we go to it? In other words, what is human progress, and how is it effected?

I. THE WAR-THEORY.

M. Michelet begins his Introduction to Universal History, by asserting that "with the world commenced a war which must end with the world and not before, that of man against nature, of spirit against matter, of liberty against necessity. History is nothing else but the recital of thisinterminable struggle." He further adds in a note on this passage, I felicitate with all my heart the new apostles who are preaching the gospel of a pacification near at hand; but I fear the treaty will serve only to materialize spirit. The industrial pantheism which believes that it is about to become a religion, knows not that religion, in order to have the least life, must spring from moral liberty, instead of falling into pantheism, which is the grave of all religions.

This note, written in 1831, was levelled at the SaintSimonians, then a powerful sect, threatening to gain a complete mastery over the French mind; and so far as intended as a protest against their unquestionably pantheistic tendencies, it was not only excusable but justifiable: and yet we are obliged to pause a moment before we can altogether accede to this doctrine of eternal struggle which M. Michelet assumes as his point of departure. It rests on the assumption of two originally hostile principles or forces between which there is and can be no peace. However disguised, this is nothing but the old Manichean heresy, the old Persian theory, oriental dualism, which divides the universebetween Ormuzd and Ahriman, two eternal and indestructi

ble principles, one good, the other evil. It assumes spirit to be good and holy, matter to be evil and unholy; man to be free, nature to be bound "fast in fate;" and finally, nature to be inherently hostile to man, always in the way of his perfection, and needing always to be combated, overcome, subdued, as the condition of his progress.

This theory M. Michelet appears to have put forth as the means of escape from Saint-Simonian pantheism, and the rationalist fatalism of the Hegelian school, introduced into France by M. Cousin, and incorporated substantially in his Course on the History of Philosophy, in 1828. The motive has been to save human freedom, which the prevailing theories threatened to annihilate, as an element that must count for something in the history of humanity. So far we applaud the motive, and accept the statement. But is this theory of two antagonist forces, of the necessary, the invincible and eternal hostility of spirit and matter, well founded? Is there in reality any ground for assuming it?

For ourselves, we confess that we regard this theory as the fundamental heresy of ancient and modern times. Disguise the matter as we may, we shall be obliged, in the last resort, as we have intimated, in order to maintain it, to adopt the old theory of oriental dualism, against which the church struggled, and almost in vain, during the first six hundred years of its existence. It loses sight of the profound significance of the doctrine of the Trinity, which lies alike at the basis of Christian theology, and of all sound philosophy whether of man or of nature. With mere duality, we admit that we have and must have war, and war only; but when we have apprehended the profound mystery of the doctrine of the Trinity, we have learned that the mediator or middle term, the reconciler of the two extremes, is integral in the original ground and cause of creation; that is to say, in the Origin, or rather in the Original of all things, there is an indissoluble synthesis, not secondary but primitive, of the two forces which we have called hostile, by virtue of the fact that the Original is not, as the theory we are considering teaches, a Duality, but a TRINITY. The two terms are reconciled, or made one, by the presence of the third. In the Original of things, then, there is, and there can be, no absolute and invincible necessity for the hostility assumed.

In all mystical philosophy and theology, the number three has been called the holy number, and the perfect number,

and not without reason; for it brings together always the two extremes, and makes them one, a perfect whole. This number which we find in the Original of all things, that isto say, in the infinite and ineffable God himself, we find. repeated throughout the universe in each order of creation, and in each individual creature. "Mundus universus," says an old writer, "nihil aliud est, quam Deus explicatus." The universe is nothing else but God expressed. The original type, pattern, model, or exemplar of all creatures, after which all were made, and without reference to which was nothing made that was made, was eternal with God, in his own infinite Logos or Reason, in the very beginning with him, in his own ineffable Essence. The Trinity which we find to be essential in God, must then of necessity be repeated through all his works. Consequently the conditions of peace, harmony, unanimity, must be always present in all parts of his universe, and within the reach of every individual creature, so long as that creature is found in its normal state.

Nor are we satisfied with the representation of our relation with nature as a relation of hostility, and therefore assuming progress to consist in overcoming and subduing it. We see nowhere the evidences of this hostility. In their origin man and nature are nearly related; and man is so made that he is incapable of living, of exhibiting the least sign of vitality, save in and through the most intimate and friendly union with nature. Cut off from communion with nature, deprived of light, air, heat, moisture, from the various, necessary, and appropriate food which he derives from the outward world, and assimilates to himself, man would instantly cease to be a living man, lose all actual existence, and become at best a mere potentiality or possibility. Nature then is not unfriendly to man, is not his enemy, which he must fight, subdue, and if possible annihilate; but she is a genial friend, his generous assistant, the chief minister to his life and pleasure. Man unquestionably acts on nature, as nature acts on him; there is a mutual action and re-action of one upon the other, as the condition of life; this action and re-action is from opposite directions, and therefore man and nature may be said to stand opposed one to the other; but after all there is no hostility in the mutual opposition. The two forces, the moment they meet, embrace, and are henceforth one.

Still more objectionable, in our view, is it to assert a

necessary and eternal hostility between spirit and matter. This is the oriental dualism in its worst form. But spirit and matter are never-no, never-in nature, providence, or grace, encountered as hostile forces. In no point of view we can take-moral, social, religious, philosophical-is there ever the radical distinction between spirit and matter this theory supposes; and nowhere do we ever find two orders of existences, one spiritual, the other material. Matter is utterly inconceivable without a spiritual basis; and spirit is equally inconceivable without a body. The assertion, not unfrequently made, that man is a soul-meaning by soul, spirit, as distinguished from a material body—is as false as it would be to say that man is a body-meaning by body, matter, as distinguished from spirit. Man is not spirit; man is not matter; nor is he spirit and matter; but, as we have said in our Synthetic Philosophy, spirit in and through matter. Man disembodied would be no more man, than the body is man when deprived of the spirit. We here assert the inseparability of spirit and matter-not by any means their identity. To assert the identity of spirit and matter is to fall either into spiritualism or into materialism, either of which were no better than the dualism we are condemning, and both of which we as studiously eschew as the saint does Satan.

The error of this dualism is in assuming spirit and matter to be two distinct and independent existences, or, more scholastically, substances. We have regarded them as ultimate. But neither of them is ultimate, or substance in itself. Back of both spirit and matter is the Tò ov of the Greeks being itself, or absolute substance. Substancethat which stands under, in the language of the schools, supports accidents-is ultimate, and in the highest sense is God -To ov ovog, Substance of substance, Being of being, and as we have learned from his revelations, not only Being of being, but essentially wise, powerful, and good; whence we learn again that absolute Being, Being in itself, is absolute Wisdom, Power, and Love, the ineffable and ever-blessed Three in One, and One in Three.

If we have found the Original of all things to be a Trinity, as we are taught by Christian theology, so do we find also a corresponding trinity in the manifestation. When we ascend to God, we find him a Trinity, the three terms of which are-1. Power; 2. Wisdom; 3. Love. These three, in their absolute unity and triplicity, are absolute

Being, regarded as being in itself. Starting now from being in itself, proceeding, so to speak, from God to crea tion, we find three terms, which are-1. Being, or the Essential; 2. The Ideal; 3. The Actual.

Now, according to the doctrine laid down, that the original type of all things is eternal in God, this second trinity, as well as the first, must be repeated throughout the universe, in each order of creation, and in each individual existence. Every being, every subject, whether of discourse or of thought even, must in its degree represent the absolute, and be capable of being contemplated under the threefold point of view of the essential, the ideal, and the actual. We say represents. We do by no means affirm, whatever some may at first sight suppose, that because each being or subject necessarily represents the absolute, therefore each being or subject is absolute, therefore the infinite God; nor a part of God, nor an emanation of God, as pantheism impiously teaches. The particular being or subject represents the absolute, and is the absolute only under the point of view of subject of its own phenomena, or cause of its own effects; but it is itself finite and phenomenal in relation to a higher subject. Man, if we contemplate him solely in relation to his own phenomena, stands for the absolute; he in this relation represents God, is, as it has been said, the Shekinah of God; but he represents him only in a finite and relative manner, for there is a subject which transcends man, and of which he is but a faint image, a dim shadow.

Taking these three distinctions, the first, the essential, is in itself inapproachable and ineffable; the second, the ideal, which is the word of the first, is what we call spirit; the third, the actual, that is, the incarnation, so to speak, of the word, is what we understand by matter.* In our technology we should substitute ideal and actual for spiritual and material. In every subject we should recognize, nay, in fact, we do recognize, both the ideal and the actual. The

*Our readers must not misapprehend us here; we are still in the domain of philosophy, and very far from attempting any invasion of the peculiar province of the Christian theologian. If we seem to give a universal interpretation to the Christian mystery of the incarnation of the Word, of "God manifest in the flesh," it is because that mystery has universal analogies, which we cannot but point out, and which we do without any intention as a philosopher of giving a universal application to what as a Christian theologian we, in common with our brethren of the church of Christ, hold to be a special truth. We hold the incarnation of the Word to be a special truth, but a special truth of so high an order as to contain within itself the universal truths to which we refer.